A pair of Linux gurus wants people to ditch the likes of Dropbox and use their alternative instead.

ownCloud is different from your average file-sharing cloud service. As an open source application, it gives users total control of the application and the data they store in it. ownCloud has developed quite the following and lays claim to some 350,000 users, says ZDNet.

Unfortunately, setting it up is a nightmare task for someone without a background in IT -- which is most of us. That's about to change.

A former executive from Novell/SUSE, Markus Rex, has joined forces with a guy well-known to certain Linux communities, Frank Karlitschek. (He contributed to KDE, one of the graphical user interfaces that for Linux). The two have got some VC backing coming from General Catalyst to fire up a business that will make ownCloud as easy to set up as Dropbox -- but will still give users all the control.

Alternatives to Dropbox are a dime a dozen. But ownCloud is different in that it has no plans to become a hosted service. Users will still need to use it on their own servers (because all of us non-IT types happen to be running servers in our basements). Or, more likely, users will rely on some rented space from an Internet hosting provider.

ownCloud also placates a whole group of people that hate the cloud, particularly free and easy-to-use services like Dropbox. These folks look to the eccentric, paranoid founder of the open source movement, Richard Stallman, as their spokesperson. Stallman has famously called the cloud "careless computing" and "stupidity."

But they have a point. The open source movement was founded to give users, rather than vendors, control over applications and data. The cloud undoes that work since users cannot see the application's source code, and it stores their data on servers outside their control.

The commercial version of ownCloud should eventually be as easy to install as any other application. The new company plans to make money by charging for support and special features. The free version will remain available for those with the tech skills to use it.